“I am well acquainted with the Batistelli servants. Adolphe is easily bribed; Snodine is a woman to whom a secret is of no value unless she can tell it; while Manassa is a garrulous old fool who will tell all he knows for nothing.”
“What have you found out?” This question was uttered in a tone that was sharp and commanding.
“Just this,” said Villefort, and he adopted a confidential manner; “you see, I am well acquainted at the hotel, and hotel servants are very observing—and very communicative under certain circumstances. It seems that one day an old man—no one at the hotel knew who he was—brought a letter from somebody for Lieutenant Duquesne. After reading this letter, probably, he cut his initials—V. D. C.—into the table. Those initials gave me my first clue.”
“But what about the old man?” asked Cromillian, for the first time showing some interest in what was being told to him.
“All right, I’ll tell you all I know,” said Villefort, still more confidentially than before. “One of the hotel servants had occasion to walk up the road and saw the old man going into the Batistelli castle. I learned from Adolphe, for a consideration, that he listened and heard Pascal Batistelli tell the man that he would give him a hundred louis d’or for something, but Adolphe could not hear just what it was. Several days ago, a shepherd boy brought a letter to Pascal Batistelli. Adolphe followed the boy and saw him give something to a man who was in the maple grove—but Adolphe says he was not the old man who first came to see Pascal. Two things Adolphe noticed—that the man wore a red vest under his jacket, and that he had lost the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.”
Cromillian brought his hand down upon the table with such force that Villefort recoiled in astonishment. The bandit then set his teeth tightly together and his brows were knit. He was recalling some circumstances, and the memories were evidently unpleasant.
Paoli had wished to go and see his mother and had sent a man in his place to carry that letter to Lieutenant Duquesne. Paoli had asked to go again to see his mother, when he had wished him to go to Ajaccio. This time Paoli had supplied another substitute—a man wearing a red vest, who had lost the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
Cromillian arose, went to a heavy oaken chest, unlocked it, and took out a bag in which the coins clinked as he dropped it upon the table. He counted out eleven louis d’or.
“Here,” he said, pushing it toward Villefort, “is the louis d’or which Count Mont d’Oro should have paid you; here are ten more for the information which you have given me, which may or may not prove valuable. Be discreet, learn all you can, and your reward will be doubled. Money comes easily to me and I consider it my duty to keep it moving. Go, now! I will attend to Count Mont d’Oro and those who are aiding him.”
The next morning, Cromillian returned early to his camp. Hardly had he reached it, when Paoli came to him and announced, with tears in his eyes, that his mother was dead and that he wished a furlough for several days in which to attend to her burial and to secure the little inheritance which was to come to him.